Κυρά της Λίμνης
by Gonch Ni
Summary: Convincing Thorin they would fare better with someone experienced in the land, Gandalf encourages him to hire a Man guide called Gilli Waters for the job. First problem: Gilli is not a Man. Second problem: Gilli is not a man.
1. After the Fire

_**Lady of the Lake:**_

 _ **Author:** xXTheAngelsHaveThePhoneboxXx, aka Nicky_

 _ **Rating:** Teen and up, but may increase to Mature, though it is unlikely._

 _ **Disclaimer:** The Hobbit and all characters therein belong to John Rondal Reuel Tolkien and Peter Jackson. This work is for recreational purposes only and serves to entertain. All rights belong to their respective owners, which are too many to list here._

 _ **Spoilers/Warning:** Book and movie cannons are used in equal measure because the book has things the movies don't, and vice versa (like, for example, I can't NOT have that beautiful Carrock scene) – spoiler for the book and all three movies – past underage – past alcoholism – canon-typical violence – character death – AU canon divergence – weird Dwarf physiology/sex/gender, because as several authors pointed out: if one third of the populations is producing one to two children, three, tops, then the Dwarf race should be extinct – archaic views of gender roles in society – other tags will be added as they appear._

 _ **Pairings:** [Thorin/OFC] (Original Female Character), other minor pairings._

 _ **Summary:** Convincing Thorin they would fare better with someone experienced in the land, Gandalf encourages him to hire a Man guide called Gilli Waters for the job. First problem: Gilli is not a Man. Second problem: Gilli is not a man._

 _ **Additional Notes:** This story is IN PROGRESS, and is undergoing editing. I don't know how often I will update, but because I am in the middle of writing it the updates will not be regular, much unfortunately. One day I will write something with enough commitment to update one or twice a week on a specific schedule but to that I say the same thing I say to the God of Death: not today._

 _ **Chapter Warnings:** Mention of past canon character death._

 _ **Notable Face Claims:** Dís, daughter of Darís — Leelee Sobieski, black haired._

 _ **Terminology:** A bunch of other fics use it so I'm going with it, because I'm not overly familiar with Tolkien's canon:_

 _Humans:_

 _General: Man/Men_

 _Guys: Man/Men_

 _Girls: Woman/Women_

 _Dwarves:_

 _General: Dwarf/Dwarves_

 _Guys: Dwarrow/Dwarrows_

 _Girls: Dwarrowdam/Dwarrowdams (Dam/Dams)_

 _ **Story: …**_

 ** _ΚΥΡΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΛΙΜΝΗΣ_**

 _1 / After the Fire_

 _~(XVX\oOo/XVX)~_

 _Story quote:_

 _"Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn't. Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don't, they'll die. Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame."_

 _― Richard Siken_

 **~(XVX\oOo/XVX)~**

 _Chapter quote:_

 _"You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened. Your co-workers ask if everything's okay and you tell them you're just tired. And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile."_

 _― Richard Siken_

 **~(XVX\oOo/XVX)~**

The dry chill of winter has never been kind to Dís.

When they lived in Erebor her rooms were perhaps the warmest; certainly hotter than those of the rest of the Royal family. North as Erebor stood, their ancestors had developed a heating system that pumped boiled water through her stone like blood. The walls and floot were warm to the skin, chasing away the cold even through the longest nights, which perhaps was why she, Thorin, and Frerin had spent so many nights on it, cocooned in a nest of thick furs by the fire. Yet even the warm blanket that wrapped her chambers had not stopped the young Dam from draping herself in thick wool gowns which covered her neck to ankle and coaxing a few small flames from the coals in the hearth. The embers in her fireplace glowed red and orange in spite of the season.

Frerin less so, but even in the warm months of spring and summer the second son of Thráin dared the chill with hesitance. Certainly, Frerin was the first of the three to leap from cliffs into the water bellow; but Dís could remember how her brother had screamed when he came up for air; how he would not stop shivering even in the lukewarm water of summer. Not, of course, that the coughing and stuffed nose had ever stopped him from scaling the rocks and flinging himself into the air once again, even if the cold sickened him much easier than it did their oldest brother. He favoured the same thick clothing as his sister once the weather gave a hint of autumn; and even with the fire alive all night the boy often found his way into his brother's room and into his bed. There had been many nights that the older of the Princes shared body heat with his golden haired brother and, once Dís came into to the world, room was made for her between them as the two slowly migrated into her hot chambers.

Their settlement in Ered Luin had no such luxuries. It was with goose pimples on her arms and neck that Dis awoke to a cold hearth on the day she saw her brother away from the semblance of a home they had carved for themselves.

She had stood by Thorin as he tightened the girth of his saddle and double checked his packs, in a thick coat draped over her nightgown in the wee dark hours afore sunup. She stroke the young mare's thick pelt with her fingers, its oily dirt from many days going unwashed collecting underneath the Lady's manicured nails. When she turned to smooth down the front of his fur-lined coat, Dís couldn't bring herself to look up at him as she spoke.

"Don't die," she whispered to him; in the kind of voice she used when they were in close proximity to her sleeping sons, so as not to wake the boys. "Don't leave me alone in this world." She had long forgotten much about Frerin; the sound of his laughter, the colour of his eyes (though logically she knew he had the same Durin blue as hers and Thorin's) the manner with which he carried himself, whether he held the quill in his right hand or his left. She could so well picture every day spent with him, every one of his actions, but the figure in her mind, the boy she chased after with a stick or a ball of mud in her hand was. . . "Don't make me forget your face."

Frerin would have said to her all he thought. He would have reassured her that he would come back to her; swear that he would keep himself and her children safe. He would have promised that he would see her next dressed in the finest silks and polished gold and sapphires rather than the gowns she had pricked the skin off her right index finger sewing by her own hand. He would have told her, "You won't be alone: you will have the boys and you will have Dwalin, and Balin—and our people."

Thorin placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed tight; she pressed her forehead to his, and her eyes were open. Dís' hands rested firm on the back of his neck while she tried to commit the texture of his hair to memory. Between the two of them his hair was thinner than hers, and shorter, and greyer.

"Look after our people," he said to her, and he didn't say, "You have always been better at it then I," nor did he say, "Until I return."

"I still don't trust him," she said as he mounted his pony. If they were not Thorin and Dís, King Regent and Crown Princess; if they were only a brother and a sister, she would have locked her fingers and he would have stepped into her hands to scale the height of the pony's back easier.

"None of us do," he said. He didn't say, "But I will not be the fool who says no to a Wizard."

Dís hummed. "I suppose one can hardly trust a Man who is thirty moved ahead. Sometimes before they see the entire playing board." Especially when this particular Man was not a Man at all and held a sudden and peculiar interest in Erebor and her reclamation. Especially when he conceived a plan to take her from underneath the claws of a Firedrake and then proceeded to announce that circumstances may not allow him to accompany Dís' brother and children all the way.

"Are you certain about this?" she asked again, looking up at her brother in the dark. Without the light of day illuminating his face he seemed younger. "You would fare well enough without a guide by you."

"It was you who had convinced me to look into the Man. That you now doubt your convictions is all things," he told her, "but comforting."

Dís shook her head and maybe, if the circumstances were different, if he was only going away for a few moons to work and sent money back to her, she might have laughed and told him to watch it because he would get lost between three rocks without her.

She watched from the doorstep as he rode north into the early, black spring morning. She stayed there still, standing in the cold as black skies turned to dark blue, turned to navy, turned to dawn. The doorstep was where Kíli found her, bleary-eyed, dark hair sticking every which way it pleased, and complaining about not getting to see Thorin off.

"You will see your Uncle in less than two moons," she said as she ushered him inside with a hand on his back.

"Why does Uncle have to leave more than a fortnight early? We are not going to get lost between here and Erebor; we don't need a guide. And Uncle certainly doesn't have to leave early just to meet him. He's the one that might get employed; if anything, he should be coming here, not Uncle Thorin there– aren't you supposed to do things for your clients, not the other way around? That's what all the Men we've ever traded with told us when we wouldn't lower the prices."

"Aye, because you are young and cannot understand that the heart of negotiation is that neither party is saticefied with what they get but it is better than nothing at all. Leave the conduct of business to more knowledgeable people until your studies are complete. Being able to tell north from south by the moss on the trees is well and good until there are no trees to look for moss on," she told him, trying to comb out some of his hair with her fingers. He ducked away from her hands with a whine and a grimace.

"Mama, I am not a boy anymore."

"I decide when you are not a boy anymore. Make yourself look like a civil Dwarrow, and wake up Fíli. Mahal knows he'll be lazying in bed for another quarter hour."

It was with these words that life in the Durin household, in a carved hole in the mountainside which had taken decades to build, began. With three people occupying a space made for four, the house was large and quiet. Even with Fíli and Kíli awake.

 **~(XVX\oOo/XVX)~**

The days passed in a hurry. There was never a shortage of work; Lady Dís, daughter of Darís, never found herself idle when Thorin was in their village in Ered Luin, and even less so when the acting King without a crown of an exiled people without a home, was not. It was a common enough occurrence that Thorin would leave; once every seven or eight years, to find work that paid well with Men, as they always paid better for Dwarf-crafted goods. She herself had gone to neighboring villages of Men a little way east to trade her crafts, and as Fíli and Kíli grew they sometimes went out also, thought never as far as she or Thorin.

Her workload did not increase overmuch when Thorin announced that he would be traveling east to the other side of the Misty Mountains, to Erebor. Dís was not sure whether it was a good thing. There were few left who could recall her home; her Mother's and Father's home. They had been forty thousand, most living within the Mountain but there was never a shortage of those who lived in Dale also. Their Mother spent most of her childhood under the sun, before she took up a career that led her to the Mountain and to their Father. Now the Dwarves of Erebor were less than eighteen thousand strong, and those numbers had slowly been decreasing over the decades.

Her own sons had grown up on only words of mouth and written texts and illustrations – some in books, others made by Frerin when he lived. The most recent recount any of the Durins had of Erebor was from Dwalin when he travelled to the Iron Hills close to thirty years ago, and she could likely count on her hands the number of times her people had braved the east before him. For those who recalled the Drake the memory was too fresh – would always be – and for those born afterward there was less a drive to return to a place they had never been, between the stories told and the fact that they had families here, a hearth and home, husbands, wives, children.

That is not to say that Thorin had a shortage of volunteers. Many were Dwarves with nothing to lose, or those who had not seen true battle. Good hearts and good souls, and all equally ambitious. They missed home. Some approached her still about signing their names to the quest, insisting that they could help and she believed them, even if she refused them. Every pair of hands could be the difference between life and death in the wilds, this she learned on her own skin.

This quest, however, was not one for an army: thirteen good Dwarrows or thirteen thousand, if the Drake lived and awoke nothing would save them from the inferno. If the Drake had choked itself to death on that cursed gold and was decomposing all over her Grandfather's floor, then her brother was in for a pungent surprise and many a day of cleaning dung and broken body parts with all of twelve pairs of hands at his side.

Nay, this quest was a heist. A secret. A quiet thought to go with a quiet deed, and both she and Thorin knew the other Dwarf Lords would agree. It was worth trying for, but it was doubtful they would give an army to Thorin if there was no guarantee of at least partial success: they swore allegiance, aye, but one's own people came first always. They would need much faith and a precious rock that gave her Grandfather mad beliefs of grandeur and slowly drove him out of his sound mind. Thorin would try, but in her bones Dís knew the request for soldiers would not hold without a great enough cause and so much at risk.

It was with this on her mind and heaviness in her heart that Lady Dís, daughter of Darís, watched as her sons packed their lives into the back of a merchants' cart close to a moon's turn after she said farewell to her last living brother.

Kíli sat crouched in its bed, bent over a pack, eyes darting as he counted in his head while his hands moved about inside the bag, mouthing the names of things to himself as he numbered them. Dís drew her blue shawl tighter around her shoulders and wished not for the first time that they were alone and she did not have to be Lady Dís; only Mother.

Her youngest boy snapped the flap of the pack shut and fastened it even as he nodded to himself. As he stood and dropped from the cart to the ground it struck her how much Durin there was in him. She had little more than word of mouth to go by when it was said that Thorin was the picture of his father, for this she could hardly recall also, but her younger boy was the image of her and Thorin. That Kíli had more Durin in his featured than he did his father was something that drew rumours when they were all younger. It was his eyes that gave away Kéli's blood in him; brown as dirt on a riverbank, only a very few shades lighter than his hair. His face and built he shared with her and Thorin.

He moved around the cart to join his brother, who stood by one of the ponies, shoes barely gracing the dirt. She could recall a time when her boy looked underneath her skirts to see if her feet really did have wheels, and was disappointed to find that no, his mother simply had a Lady's grace. It was he now that moved like a feline, swift and quiet. Hunter's feet. He had chased so many cats in his childhood, learning from them, trying to move as gracefully and silently, repeating to himself time and again that to catch a cat he had to be a cat.

He probed Fíli in the side, then called out, "Dead," and chastised him from not paying close attention to his surroundings.

"Next time I will have a knife in my hand, and then you can explain to Mother why your fingers are lying at your feet," Fíli said to his brother.

"You would have to be faster than a two hundred and thirty year old for that to happen."

"I'll show you fast," Fíli snapped, and it was only a short scuffle before he had his brother on one knee, in a choke hold and with one arm wrenched at a dangerous angle behind his back. "Yield," he said, but Kíli shook his head, grinning mad.

"Never on your life," he proclaimed.

"Fíli, Kíli," Dís snapped, and the two Princess straightened at once, brushing off their clothes halfheartedly.

"He started it, Ma," they said in unison, pointing fingers at one another.

"I don't care who started it," she said, coming closer. "I am finishing it, before you can embarrass yourselves further. Are you certain you have everything packed? A spare skin? Your flint boxes?"

"Yes, Ma. And our thicker cloaks, and the dried fruits you told us to purchase, and all of the other fifty things you had us make a list of. I double checked," Kíli said, "and then I double checked the double check." Dís shot him a warning look but nodded. He dropped his head and muttered a muffled apology.

If they had been anyone else but the Crown Princes and the heirs to the Durin throne, she might have fussed over the state of his hair, unbound and unkempt from the short struggle he had had with his brother. She might have combed it out with her fingers and braided it up away from his eyes. She might have kissed his face and crushed him and his brother both to her chest and not let go for a long time.

Her sons, her little boys, stood by a merchants' cart, gold hair and brown so dark it was nearly black, swords and arrows at their backs, and the only thing she had to ask of them was, "Come back to me." Dís wasn't sure which hurt more: that this was as she had stood with her brothers so many decades ago and asked the same thing but only Thorin returned, or that she was saying those same words now to her own children. Dís could not recall Frerin's face, but she did remember standing between them, the lads in their armour and braids and looking every bit the Princes they were for the first time in too long, and making them swear that she would see them again.

Thorin and Frerin, and now Fíli and Kíli. Suddenly her eyes were stinging.

"Mama," Fíli said, and when he looked at her like that, with eyes so much like hers, she found a part of her hated Thorin. She couldn't press her boy to her chest as she so wanted to, nor could she cry, but she could tell him to watch over his brother, to always keep Kíli safe because it was his job.

"Watch over little Kíli, Fíli," she had said to him, as she had so very often in his life. "Look after your little brother." It was the first thing she told him on her birthing bed when she placed her newborn second son in his arms.

She touched her forehead to his and took her time to pull away and look at him, brushed a phantom stray hair from his face, cupped his cheek. The smile she smiled not really a smile.

"Next time I see you, we will be dressed in gold no Dwarf has touched in one hundred and seventy one years," he told her, "And you will have the finest hair pieces and necklaces and chains in all of Middle-earth," Fíli said as he toyed with the beads she wore about her neck. "You'll never have to work again, or sell your crafts for half price or sacrifice purchasing a new gown to get more food for the winter again. I promise, Ma."

"Just promise to be safe."

"We will be. Uncle won't let anything happen to us, no matter how much we annoy him." It was meant as a joke, a jest, but she didn't find it in her heart to smile.

"Take care of each other," she bid. "Don't rely on anyone else to do it for you, not even Thorin: he might not be able to." That he might not be there anymore to protect them was not said, but she couldn't say that to her sons even if she needed to. She trusted Thorin with their lives—she trusted him less so with his own, damn his hero complex.

She looked at her second son next, and again was stricken by how alike Thorin he was in face. The bow he had slung across his back was of his own making. His first bow, the one he trained with for many years, the one that belonged to Frerin when he lived, was left in his room, in a decoratively carved mahogany case.

She pressed her labradorite stone into his palm as she held his hands, and it was the most she could afford here in public, saying farewell for the second time that day. This was formality; their hearts had spoken their last words back in the house, away from prying eyes. And yet, it was not enough.

"Don't let each other out of your sight," she ordered, and again she was not sure whether it hurt more that she had spoken those words to Thorin and Frerin, and only one came back because they didn't listen, or that she said them to her children now. "Return to me."

Another King on another mad quest to take back another homeland. How have they wronged to deserve a history that repeated itself so?

She held Kíli's hands tight and made him promise to stay with Fíli and do what Fíli told him and not cause their Uncle trouble or he would send them back here.

"We will be Dwarrows grown when we see each other again. You will be proud of us, Ma."

"I am always proud of you," she said, and she didn't say, "Don't be in such a hurry to grow up," nor did she say, "There is little pleasure in being a Dwarrow grown."

"I wish you'd come with us, Ma," Kíli said. "This quest would go over easy if you were there. You can shame an Orc into a corner with just the Durin Glare, let alone when you start talking—it was a compliment, I swear!" he blurted when she turned the 'Durin Glare' on him. "See? Right there. That's what I'm talking about. You do it better than even Uncle. And nobody does it better than Uncle," he said, nodding.

"And who, do you imagine, will be taking care of the settlement if I went?"

"Someone who deserves to sit in a council meeting and listen to the nobles whine and cry and piss on each other's shoes. . . What? You can't deny it if it's true. They can sit here and you can be a decorated hero of Erebor."

"I already am. Raised the two of you, had I not?" she paused, then said, "Take care of one another. Don't talk to strangers. Listen to Thorin, and don't wander far from the rest of the Company."

"Ma—"

"I'm speaking," she snapped. "I am very serious about this. I remember what happened the first time you left here with Thorin and Dwalin. Stay close, and stay safe, and next I see you I expect a complete report. Am I understood?"

"Yes, Ma," her boys agreed in unison.

Her thick gown did not protect her from the sharp cold winds that blew as she waved her sons farewell.

They sat among several merchants in the back of a pony-drawn wagon, legs dangling over the side as it rocked over uneven terrain, and waved until they were out of sight. When Thorin and Frerin left with her grandfather she ran after their ponies, matching their pace for long before she tired and had to stop; but she was not the only child running after her family anymore. She was Lady Dís now, and she could afford only to stand and watch.

So stand she did, long after after they had disappeared from her sights, shawl providing no shelter from the cold of the morning. The sun was well into rising when she went back inside the house they have carved out for themselves; Dwarrows and Dams pressed their fists to their hearts as she walked by. The house was not large, but it was large enough, and certainly bigger that those of other, less popular folk, but like every house, it had a kitchen table and a hearth and a bed and family, and that was enough.

The house had slowly, without her allowing it, begun to feel like home. It was where she brought her husband when they wed, and where she and he made two beautiful children. It was where Thorin came back to. In the sitting room was the fireplace that melted the snow from his clothes. In the kitchen stood the table where her brother and youngest son skinned and cleaned the first game Kíli shot down (and needless to say she was not pleased in the least with the bloodied mess they made). The first door to the right in the hall was hers, and across from that was her children's, and it was where she nursed them to health and sang them to sleep. On the oval carpet underneath the fireplace was where she laid out furs, and she and Thorin read storied to her boys on the long nights. It was not Erebor. It was not home. But it was close; it was good, and safe, and it was where she and her children grew up.

It was a short time later that she discovered her boys had forgotten their oilskins, still hanging in their wardrobe, and quietly, with only the walls to bare witness, Dís began to cry.

 **~(XVX\oOo/XVX)~**

 _ **Other Additional Notes:** When this chapter began I intended to stick some plot into it. Honest. In fact it wasn't even going to be from Dís' POV, but it got away from me and all we got was the last time (canonically) that a mother had seen her children before they went off to fight a dragon and died trying to protect their Uncle (book canon). Well, to my credit I did squeeze in a little plot. A build up to a plot. A hint at a character involved in the plot development._

 _Yes, Kíli's rune stone is indeed labradorite. I thought it was malachite in the film because it looked green, but a quick Google search revealed I was mistaken._

 _Title is in Greek (massive thank you for the accurate translations to a good friend of mine), meaning Lady of the Lake. It is unrelated to the Arthurian legend. The title is in Greek for reasons of which I will tell to you another, less spoiler-y time._

 _Anyway, I hope you guys liked it, and I will see you all next time :))_


	2. Before the Flood

_**Notes:** Thank you to everyone who took that time to read the first chapter! It makes me smile like an idiot to know people read and like my work, it totally makes me day :)) I love sharing with you, being part of this community of creative minds and dedicated collective, and it warms my heart that I am one of you :))_

 _ **Special Thanks:** MisfiredSynapse, Bleeding Blue Kunoichi, Arianna Le Fey, Belinda Valentine Bite, Just4Me, SimplyMonkey, alexma, and amariabt. I reply to reviews by PM, or in the **Additional Notes** section at the bottom of the reviewer in not logged in, but I always reply because each of you readers is so awesome and wonderful and I love you!_

 _ **Chapter Warnings:** Past character death mentioned._

 _ **Notable Face Claims:** Ragna, daughter Ragnil — Gemma Whelan_

 _ **Wibbly Wobbly Timeframe:** Chapter takes place after Thorin left in chapter 1 but before Fíli and Kíli left._

 _ **Beta:** The absolutely wonderful Wildhorses1492, who beta read my original edition and now is helping me with the rewritten piece. You are amazing!_

 _ **Story:** …_

 _ **ΚΥΡΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΛΙΜΝΗΣ**_

 _2 / Before the Flood_

 **~(XVX\oOo/XVX)~**

 _"Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again."_

 _― Richard Siken_

 **~(XVX\oOo/XVX)~**

Ragna came into Thorin's acquaintance twelve years before Fíli came into the world, and their meeting was quite by happenstance: his cupbearer, the lad's name long forgotten, had fallen ill and a replacement was sent to attend to him and his Council at some meeting or other discussing a newly uncovered mining site. The table sat fifteen including himself at its head and the lass went Dwarrow to Dwarrow pouring wine or ale or mead by preference, fetching scrolls, announcing visitors. Not atypical of a servant and not extraordinary. In fact he was not too proud to admit that he had not taken note of his original cupbearer having been replaced until a moon later when the lass had still not resumed her original duties.

He would find out only close to a decade later that the lass had been able to retain her position by the grace of his sister, whom had taken pity on the girl who served Thorin's drinks and appointed her to the task more permanently. She had been a handmaiden to a Lord's wife, he learned, and the Dam had fired her, leaving the girl to hunger in the streets until the kitchen called for hands. She was hardly an adult then, some fourteen years Thorin's junior and he himself having only just crossed the threshold of one hundred; too young to have been exposed to the cold distance of wary strangers but old enough to have done unsavoury things to place food upon her and her younger brother's table.

There had been no revelation there, no epiphany nor grand gesture. It was years, decades even, before he truly stopped to take notice that his life became easier, more orderly. For a long time he had simply assumed he was only growing used to being King Regent, to the responsibilities that came with the title that he had come into hardly beyond his sixtieth year. It was Dís who shoved him in the direction of realizing it was not the only component in the system that finally began to run smoothly.

One day during a Council meeting his ale had left a bitter aftertaste in his throat and less than a quarter hour later the migraine he had been fighting off for the past two days eased to a pestering pulse against the inside of his skull. The desire to gouge his eyes out or pull his hair from his scalp at the roots receded, along with the sensitivity to light and sound, and the ever-present fight to not be sick all over Balin's tunic and lap.

When he demanded of the lass what she had mixed into his drink, under pain of execution on the grounds of attempted assassination, attempted regicide, and treason before the Crown (because yes, he had a history of reasons to suspect her of that and yes, he was ever embarrassed of the accusation in the aftermath) Ragna, hysterical and shaking like a leaf, wept, "You refused to take the tonic since yestermorn, m'Lord. M'lady Dís had advised that I put it in your cup instead. She was the one who had given me the tonic, m'Lord; I swear it by my beard, m'Lord!"

Thorin couldn't remember if he had apologized for terrifying her so much that the lass couldn't look at him for a moon afterward, but if he had not Thorin would prefer to not bring it up again. Nevertheless Ragna continued as she had, admirably so, for his other servants could hardly continue working after he lashed out at them, (too often) fleeing in tears and never returning into his service.

The migraines were few and far between afterward. She had seen them coming a day sooner and mixed painkillers into his drink, serving nothing but water for nigh on half a week as the gentle yet ever-present push inside of his head subsided and left him to his peace. When there were no meetings to be had none were to enter his study unless somebody died.

Ten years passed, then twenty. He stopped misplacing invaluable papers, stopped overbooking his meetings, stopped being bothered with trifle affairs such as a stolen chicken, the civil disputes being Dís' to sort out as it were. Ragna poured his mead and fed his guests, scheduled his daily chores, booked his meetings, organized and managed events, readied his speeches, filtered his letters, and once he began finding the sedatives on his bedside table every night the nightmares went away. His personal staff stopped changing once every several moons

This went on for twenty seven years before Thorin learned her name. It had been that same amount of time before he started exchanging with her more than five sentences per moon (that, however, was entirely her own doing. The lass was mute as a fish and Thorin was content enough to not speak. Why instigate something he had no desire to partake in?). After twenty seven years, he incidentally overheard a conversation she was having just outside his solar.

"Tell me the good news," the lass demanded of someone, and while the reply was too quiet, her rebuke was anything but. "Still? It has been three bloody moons. Tell Master Ganrir that if he is displeased the current tax rate and the coin's utilization he can pack his things and turn his badge in. If his Lordship wishes to use that money to fund the educational department, then fund the educational department he shall. Inform the Marshal the expansion of our militia will be discussed at another time, the time of the King Regent's choosing, and m'Lord is not to be disturbed over this again.

"Make yourself useful, boy: his Lordship will be seeing the representatives that arrive with the trading caravan this eve; he needs to look the part of his title. Find Master Cáhl and tell him his appointment is rescheduled to two houses sooner, and fetch me Tel'c; tell him to bring me the reconstruction blueprints. His Lordship needs them yesterday."

T'was then that Thorin realized who great a luck it was that Dís came upon the girl and directed her into his service, as her title of cupbearer slowly morphed into something much hire on the ranking system. Many decades have gone by since that day, and Thorin sincerely hoped many more were to come as he stood gazing up at the sign, wheezing as it swung in the wind. The early spring rain poured in curtains from the skies as Men and Women dashed about the streets, ducking under rooftops for shelter from the chill and water. Thorin was the only one not shivering and exhaling hot breath against his fingers.

It was months ago, on a night not unlike this one that he had met Gandalf, further south in a settlement of Men in on the outskirts of The Shire:

The inn had been built for Men and Hobbits both and so the shorter tables and chairs were a far more comfortable height in Bree than were in the other Man settlements he had worked. The room and the food were warm and even when his dinner was interrupted by a Wizard his mood had not grown fouler. That happened later, just afore the wondering Wizard had left.

"You will need a small traveling party. Fifteen at greatest, if it can be helped. This is not a quest for an army," Gandalf had told him. Thorin knew this. "Fifteen of those you trust more than most." The King Regent had nodded thoughtfully as he thought it over.

"I have several Dwarrows in mind. Extended family, loyal friends. With yourself and the burglar you so insist on, seventeen at most." They have conversed for what must have been two hours at the least, three more likely than not by that time. It had been the first time in five years that he had heard of his father and his doings. The hopes that the Wizard knew his whereabouts had died when the tall elderly said no more of Thráin beyond that he had come to the Dwarfs many years ago to offer him the very quest he was now discussing with Thorin.

That loss of hope was later made up for with the proposition of the quest and the promise of going home, but it saddened him no less that his father would not be with him should they walk the halls that coloured his childhood memories with him.

A small garrison of no more than fifteen good Dwarves and a burglar. This was no quest for a legion of five thousand warriors, not a battle to be won in the field. It was a heist. He knew it then and he knew it now, even as he travelled North to conference with the other Clan leaders. They would likely refused to lend an army, all having lost so much the last time a Durin called on them, but it was worth trying at the very least.

"Eighteen," he had said to him. "In the case that we should be separated, that I am unable to escort you all the way to the Lonely Mountain you will need one who knows the land and its people. A guide, so to say."

They could have fared just as well with a map and a functioning compass, in his opinion, and he stood by that opinion even now. They did not need a guide. A guide implied someone well-traveled, and any self-respecting Dwarf walked no large distances away from the stone from which they came. A traveled guide implied someone who lived on the surface, which meant Men and that was an unwise suggestion in the gentlest of terms in Thorin's vocabulary, though he had enough wits about him not to mention the absurdity of the Wizard's suggestion to said Wizard.

"I take it you have one in mind also?" Thorin had asked, thought it was more of a statement of fact than a question, and the Wizard did not need to nod in confirmation. "Who?"

"You will meet them soon enough, I imagine," Master Gandalf had told him, "When the time is right. We will meet often if we are to succeed in this undertaking: I will introduce you, once I find him."

"Find him?"

"He is a traveler, Master Thorin, and a rather quite good one I daresay. People like him are rarely easily discovered if they do not wish to be." It went without saying that the a Wizard knew more than he said—he remembered his father telling him as much when he was a child, when Gandalf the Grey had visited Erebor—but interrogation he would leave to Dís.

It was that particular part of the lengthy conversation that lasted deep into the wee hours of the morning that brought him to where he was now, standing in an alehouse in a town called Loch little more than a week's journey northeast from their settlement in Ered Luin. Like that night, the skies have opened up and the cold rain of early spring drenched everything in its path. Slush tracked on the tavern floor, brown and wet. The room was kept warm by the fire pit and the multitude of candles that lit it but even so heavy coats stayed worn by most of the residents. The Black Rabbit was a large inn with a substantial alehouse on the ground floor, which presently had very few vacant chairs. Or rather: the Black Rabbit was a large alehouse with an inn above it, because the rooms more likely than not were for those drunkard who were too dim of mind to walk home.

Thorin took the note that had come to him by raven from an inside pocket in tunic and smoothed the twice-folded parchment. On it were a town, a location and two dates between the end of last moon and the beginning of the current, signed by the Grey Wizard at the bottom. The letter had arrived shortly after midwinter, one of the several that they have exchanged over the time the quest has been in planning. At the time those whom have signed to it were numbered eight and he and Dís were warring with their boys for nine and ten. Now thirteen including himself were to journey, though Dís might as well change her mind between now and a fortnight hence about their lads.

Certainly as sons of Durin they had as much right as he to journey to the homeland they had not once seen and be the first to walk the halls which no Dwarrow had graces in one hundred and seventy one years, but they were seventy seven and eighty two each. They were impressionable youngsters whose experiences in battle extend to the training ring with Dwalin, and the odd Orc and idiot thief once every decade or so when they worked outside Ered Luin for some extra coin in the harder winters. They thought what all children thought, and it had been an endless battle of wits between Dís and the boys as to whether they are old enough or not. Of course as their mother she had the final say, something she had reminded them of one night when she had finally tired of explaining why they would not be going. It, however, and not stopped the lads from trying.

"I am your mother. I decide when and when not you are old enough to go off for moons and moons without a word or hint to sooth your poor mother's old heart as to how her sons are faring. That you would have me sit here wondering if you are well, if you are fed and warm and well-treated and alive… it can be a year at the very least before I see you once more, if I do at all!"

"You're not old!" Fíli had said. "You will never be old, especially not to us, mother!"

"Fíli is right, and you know what they say about age and wisdoms coming hand in hand. Years only serve to make you the better at ruling our people and raising your sons, ma."

The flattery tactic had unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the point of view) backfired when Dís said that yes, indeed wisdom came with age and therefore they ought to heed her word as a gospel of Mahal himself. Thorin himself had yet to decide which he agreed with more.

On the one hand they were his successors—successors, plural, because it has always been Fíli and Kíli, not Fíli or Kíli, and they would rule their people just as they had done everything else—blood of Durin and Princes. They deserved to live in the halls of their ancestors and dress in the finest clothing and polished gold, adorn themselves with sapphires and topazes, and wear mithril beads in their braids; not scavenge for throw-always in second-hand junk shops as parts and materials for crafts, and scar their hands in labour. A Prince's hands ought to be smooth and clear, not scar-laden and chapped.

On the other hand they were his boys, and that alone was all the counter argument he needed.

Dís had said that should something happen to her children because of his oversight… That was as far as she got. Three days later Thorin packed basic traveling necessities and spare coin and embarked northeast. Pride or no, the prospect of Gandalf not seeing the quest through and the Company being left half-clueless about the road was unfavourable. He would look into this guide the Wizard so insisted he take with them. He promised no more than that, and likely he would dismiss the Man as soon as he saw him but to have someone who was familiar with the land and its people would a good thing. Good, but certainly not necessary. All the same, he owed it to his boys, to his sister, to his people.

That Loch stood a day's ride south of the halfway point between the settlement in Ered Luin and where his meeting with the Dwarf Lords would be held in little more than a fortnight was either lucky coincidence or Gandalf's work, of which the later was more likely than not.

He walked up to the front desk and cleared his throat. The owner of the inn, an elderly gentleman with greying hair and a recording hairline, looked over the edge of the bar at him.

"Can I help ye, sir?"

"Ragna, son of Ragnil," he said. The Man turned his attention to the booking long, leafing through several pages, then looked back at Thorin.

"Ah. Here ye go. Room seventeen. It's on the second floor," he said with a nod. Thorin gave him thanks and left to find the lass. Ragna had left two days sooner than he and they were to reunite here for another two days before she left, again ahead of him, to make it to the meeting place first and have everything arranged for his arrival.

The door was locked but the Dam opened it on the third knock, stepping aside to let him in with her right fist pressed over her heart. Two beds stood at walls opposite one another and the lass' things were occupying the one closest to the door.

"Tharkûn is here, m'Lord," she informed him as she closed the door. "He arrived a day ago, alone. I imagine he would like to oversee things personally. We will be meeting later tonight, at eight. We have five hours to finalize a plan of action, m'Lord," she said as he dropped his bags and weapons on the vacant bed.

"I put together a small inquisition: a lad by the name of Gilli Waters arrived in Lock close to one week ago packed for short distance travel, left a large work horse in the stables. He booked room number eight for a fortnight and paid in advance, and comes down to the tavern every night at dinner. More often than not he takes someone up to his room at around nine; for the past three days it has been one of the kitchen hands. I suggest a financial approach first: show him we are businessmen before anything else, and push on his… other occupations more subtly, m'Lord. Force him out of his comfort zone; make him lose control of the situation." She paused, opened her mouth to add something, and then thought better of it. Likely it was a comment about missing Balin in that moment, or something to that likeness.

Thorin nodded, hanging up his oilskin on the back of one of the two chairs, running several scenarios in his head about the confrontation. Financially stable, self-assured, confident, socially adept, and based in routine. Such an assortment of qualities made people arrogant, and arrogant people made the mistake of overestimating themselves.

 **~(XVX\oOo/XVX)~**

Ragna came into Thorin's bed seventeen years after Kíli came into the world, and their coupling was quite by happenstance: on the anniversary of Frerin's death Thorin found himself once more in a tavern in the village, downing his seventh ale and ordering an eighth. The lass had discovered him and canceled the order, put his arm around her shoulder, half dragged and half carried him back to his house. Dís slapped him into some semblance of lucidity (and a bruising) and snapped at him that there were healthier ways to cope, that he had quite enough for the night. They dropped him into bed in his clothes and boots and the next day his sister held his hair out of the way as he emptied the contents of his stomach into a bucket.

A week later Ragna asked him why he thought it wise to drink himself into a stupor, and he told her something his brother used to tell him:

"What it necessary is not always what is wise."

In the evening she came to his study before he had retired for the night and brought drink with her. She told him that her mother died in the Battle of Azanûlbizar. The Dam was a physic and went to the war after her brother, spent three years fighting for her King, but on the day of the final battle one of the medical camps was ambushed. Everyone was slaughtered and the camp burned. Ragna and her younger brother, Rogo, came to live with their Uncle, who died short of ten years thereafter.

Thorin told her how his father separated Thorin and Frerin before the Battle; they worked best together but Thráin believed it would serve the garrisons better to have a Prince each, and despite their protests his father's advisors agreed with the logic. Thorin was not the one who found Frerin's body, and he wasn't the one who lit his pyre. He was the one who blackened the King's eye and bloodied his nose, and delivered words to Thráin that he likely had never once in his life heard directed at him.

He didn't tell her how he spent the next moon and a half at the bottom of a wineskin, but it was more likely than not the lass assumed it just the same.

Instead of finishing her mead and leaving she stood, leaned across the table, and kissed him. What happened later was the expected string of events. They lay together because it was convenient, because it was familiar, because it was more about their mutual losses than about each other. It was violent and grieving and sad and maybe a little pathetic, but good—safe. Many others have lost someone to that bloody war, but most preferred to keep their grief to themselves. The knowledge of what the other lost made the entire affair more intimate somehow, and more dangerous, but also more reliable.

It continued for eight years before Ragna met Naeg. They never had children, Naeg being craft-wed, but Ragna made a happy bride just the same. The two adopted a pair of orphaned boys shortly after her marriage, from a child shelter Dís had funded to build and sustain (one of the many interactive social care projects his royal sister ran) and when he learned of the adoption Thorin saw to it that the lads wanted for nothing.

She left them with hardly a week's notice when he called on her, said farewell to her One and children and travelled northward for him, for an indefinite amount of time.

Dís asked her once whether she was considering signing herself to his Company, but Ragna said he would refuse her if she had: "My mother left me to fight for her King and she didn't come back," she had said. "I'd never leave my sons alone, and m'Lord would not orphan my children, either."

Later during supper his sister told him, "You found yourself a real gem, you did, Thorin," and Thorin didn't correct her, knew Dís meant he had somehow managed to keep the lass.

Now Ragna stood beside him as he surveyed the tavern. She tapped his elbow and nodded leftward to the bar.

"That is him, m'Lord," she said to him. "In the sun hat."

Thorin followed her line of sight to one of the occupied stools at the large curving table until his eyes fell upon a floppy straw hat, and the person to whom it belonged, and decide right then that he was going to give Gandalf the Grey a number of choice words at what he saw.

 _ **Additional Notes:** I meant to introduce the actual beginnings of a plot here, too. Instead I did another exposition chapter. For this one, however, I'm not sorry. There is a grand total of one lady Dwarf in the Hobbit universe, and she is mentioned all of twice across one book and three movies, something I understand and accept but feel cheated out of. There are far too few stories with the shorter ladies of Middle-earth, so I wanted to introduce a few more._

 _Next chapter will be from Gilli the guide, and then chapter four they will all meet. I was gonna write her in now but the first two chapters are titled After the Fire and Before the Flood for a reason so..._

 _Just a heads up now before we continue: no, the story will not be recreating the events of the book/films scene for scene. This fic will focus on behind/between the scenes. Everything that the book and films didn't show us. There will be very little of what we are actually shown in the source material._

 _Because of the OC, the OC's profession, and the OC's position, the story will go into AU. Not majorly, that being the key events will still take place, but with a person with them who knows the way better than most I imagine the journey will take a bit of a different path. I found an awesome timeline somewhere and lost the link (I'm very sorry. If I find it I will post it) and will be following it. I'll throw in dates every now and again to keep better track of what takes place when._

 _Until next time!_


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